C. Budd Bayliff, was a huge Packard enthusiast who purchased the rights
to the Packard name and trademarks in 1978 and soon introduced a line of
Packard Custom Sedan and Coupe replicars based on late-model GM passenger
cars at his 2100 Harding Highway shop in Lima, Ohio. His replicars ranged from simple
cosmetic changes to elaborate body modifications such as new front and rear
body structures with early-1930s style clamshell front fenders with side-mounts
and a separate trunk. The front ends of some of Bayliff's modern Packards
look remarkably like those found on the 1970 Stutzes and are often mistaken
for them at car shows. A long-wheelbase Bayliff Packard was built for
professional boxer Ernie Holmes in the early 1980s.

Bayliff is known to
have built 4 hearses, and had a hand in another one, which was the prototype 1983
front-wheel-drive Miller-Meteor Eldorado built by Jack Hardesty. Another one of the hearses was a service car conversion of a
Suburban for a funeral home in Lima while the third was a short wheelbase
Cadillac hearse built for his brother in Spencerville, Ohio using a "theft
recovery" purchased from an insurance company.

In the mid 1980s, the Long & Folk funeral homes of Wapakoneta and St.
Marys, Ohio,
had worn out a pair of 1981 Superior combination coaches they had been using for non-emergency medical
transfers and funeral service. The 1981 Superiors were among the last
combination coaches offered by any professional car manufacturer and John
Long of Long & Folk visited just about every coachbuilder in North America
trying to find new ones.

Coming from a family of funeral directors, Bud Bayliff
was a natural choice to handle the commission, and his shop's close
proximity to the Long & Folk funeral homes allowed for close collaboration
between Long and Bayliff.

Bayliff had recently helped finished Jack Hardesty's fwd Miller-Meteor
prototype and offered to build a similar vehicle for the Longs. After
consulting with his clients, Bayliff chose the Buick Riviera as a
donor-vehicle because of its size, strong V8 engine and automatic leveling
rear suspension.

Because of the expense involved in building these cars
and the fact that going from Cadillac to Buick chassis would have meant a
step down in prestige, it was decided to convert the coaches to Bayliff
Packards. In the conversion process, the cars would have lost their Buick
Riviera identity at the rear anyway, and Bayliff was already building
Packards from Rivieras, so the conversion was a natural.

Construction began in
1986 and the first one was completed in 1987, the second in 1988. Even
though they were complete a few years after their titles indicate, both cars
are registered as 1985 Rivieras.

The two Rivieras were cut, stretched 46 inches and
converted into five-door pillared hardtop landaus. The rear side doors are
Riviera coupe doors, while the front doors are re-skinned Cadillac Seville
units. Roof construction is all steel. A pair of 1973 Superior Cadillac
combination coaches were cannibalized for components such as rear loading
doors, attendant jump seats and miscellaneous hardware.

One of the many problems encountered in the project was
the taillights. Originally outfitted with large,
round taillights in the rear doors and auxiliary taillights mounted beneath
the rear bumper, Long and Folkes eventually replaced them with units from a 1985 Cadillac Eldorado.

Only two Bayliff Packard funeral coaches were constructed, however production of Bayliff's
other Packards continued into the late 1980s. In 1992 C. Bud Bayliff sold the Packard name
and trademark to Canadian millionaire Roy Gullickson for an estimated
$50,000. By 1996 Gullickson had
developed his own full-size model for a modern Packard, inspired by the 1941
Packard Clipper sedan. Over the next two years he and five engineers and
technicians (plus a stylist from the original company) pounded out a
handcrafted working prototype at a cost of $800,000.

Gullickson's
all-aluminum Packard is equipped with all-wheel drive, disk brakes and a
massive V-12 from Ryan Falconer Industries that heaves out 440hp. With
dimensions similar to those of a Cadillac DeVille, the new Packard looks
enormous but weighs only 3,748 pounds. Gullickson claims it can get from
0-60 in 4.8 seconds and will be priced at $160,000.

Although he claims to have orders for 70 cars, Gullickson has yet to
raise the $10 million needed to build his first batch of 10 to 12 cars,
priced at $160,000 apiece. And he's managed to alienate himself from a major
portion of his potential customers by sending cease-and-desist
letters to anyone using the Packard logo on their website or parts business.